Murdoch upbeat about play-offs despite Norway defeat

Skip David Murdoch remains confident that his Team GB men’s curling rink can qualify for the play-offs at the Winter Olympics despite defeat to Norway.

Murdoch lost his penultimate match of the round-robin stage at the Ice Cube Curling Centre 7-6 in the final end against Norwegian skip Thomas Ulsrud.

Team GB’s men face China next needing to win to book a place in the top four while lose and they’ll have to rely on results elsewhere going their way.

That primarily involves Norway, with Ulsrud’s rink on a record of four wins and three defeats having played a match less than Murdoch, who is five and three.

Norway are in action in the evening session but Murdoch isn’t concentrating on them and is adamant they can beat China, who are in the play-offs.

“I had a couple of bad ones out there, we had them on the ropes a little bit a few times and never really took our chances. We could have been a bit more clinical and been in front a lot earlier,” he said.

“We showed that we are playing some good stuff in our first five and, certainly our last five, we played some decent stuff as well. We are going to have to come out tough.

“It seems to be like that for me at the Olympics, always leaving it to the hardest way possible. It is still in our hands. We can’t let that defeat us too much.

“Obviously they are playing well but so are we and we have only lost a couple of games by a few inches and we need to take the positives from that.”